l60 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



wish quacks to practice upon our families, we will not have pet- 

 tifoggers to look after our property, we will not risk taking car- 

 bolic acid in place of sulphur. We must have people who know 

 the difference between the right and the wrong in their occupa- 

 tons. Is it not strange, though, that we do not demand with 

 the same insistence that the people who practice other things 

 that have just as much to do with our present and eternal wel- 

 fare as the man who would give us poison in place of food, 



should have the same technical training? My predecessor 

 spoke about the inefficiency of schools in certain districts or 



localities. We send our children, whom we think have eternal 

 souls, to have those souls moulded by the most inefficient teach- 

 ers that can possibly be found. People who cannot earn through 

 the labor of their hands or the exercise of their brains above 

 twenty or thirty dollars a month, at anything which is actually 

 productive for the community, may possibly find occupations in 

 the schools in some places. Of course it is not where any of you 

 live, but there are people in certain places who can find employ- 

 ment as teachers who cannot find employment in any other occu- 

 pation. You know Will Carleton had a poem about the man 

 who was going to make an editor out of his son because he was 

 good for nothing else. In some places they make preachers out 

 of those who are good for nothing else, and in a great many 

 places they make teachers out of those who are good for nothing 

 else, ^^'hy should we not demand technical training for the 

 teachers as well as for the doctors ? 



Technical training is obviouslv necessarv for the protection 

 of the public. It is also necessary for the success of the indi- 

 vidual. That, I think, hardly needs an illustration. Probably 

 there is no one in this audience who would have to think one 

 moment before he would remember some one of his acquain- 

 tance who, with technical training in some line, no matter what 

 it is, has achieved success, while others who had apparently the 

 same knowledge, the same opportunities in life, have achieved 

 at least less success. It is true that many people come to the 

 front without technical training, that is, training in the schools. 

 If every one was quick witted, a close observer, drawing correct 

 conclusions from his observations, he might not need the tech- 

 nical training. But unfortunately, or possibly more fortu- 

 nately, there are not many geniuses in the world. There are 

 none in my family, and I have not heard of any among my imme- 



